부산대학교 도서관

Droplet microfluidics is an important technique, used for antibiotic susceptibility testing and analysing bacteria at the single cell level. Optical screening methods allow for fast and reliable readout of bacteria density in droplets, however most of those optofluidic platforms are based on fluorescent light detection. This limits the applicability of the method only to genetically modified and labelled bacteria strains [1]. Here, we demonstrate a label-free readout of bacteria density in nanoliter droplets. This is achieved by detection of light scattered by bacteria inside the droplet. We demonstrate the we can differentiate empty droplets and the ones where bacteria proliferated. Additionally, we included a fluorescence detection path to verify our readout. The experiments are performed on the example of Escherichia coli proliferation.